Wonder and Awe
by Darthishtar
Summary: *Breaking Dawn minor spoiler* In Chapter 1, Bella runs into two car fanatics while driving. This is their story.


"_Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawd."_

Matt wasn't the type to sound overawed by something, so I looked up immediately at that. He was _supposed_ to be in charge of getting Funions and wiping the bug-crud off the windshield, but as usual, my brother had the attention span of a gopher.

Instead of squeegeeing the windshield, he was staring at something at the next pump over as if he'd just found gold dust at Sutter's Mill. No, that wasn't right. He had the look on his face that he did after Nancy let him kiss her the first time. The one where you wonder if he was overreacting or if someone had just finished creating heaven and earth.

Naturally, I had to check out whatever was holding his fascination. I leaned casually against the Explorer and glanced over my shoulder…

Okay, so it was a teenage girl in a hooded sweatshirt that had seen better days and a regular pair of jeans. It was my turn to stare at him, but I picked absolute bewilderment for my expression.

"Look at that body, Chris," he crooned. "That coloring… Oh, man, if I could just get my hands on her…"

I was getting the impression that I should stop listening and not mention this conversation to my sister-in-law.

"I don't even think I've _seen_ one of those things on the road," he concluded in a slightly dazed tone.

_Huh?_

He was now leaning on the hood of our trusty old SUV and staring longingly across the price tag for Diesel fuel with his chin in his hands. If he kept this up for just another minute, I was going to brain him with the nozzle.

"Wait'll I tell the guys at work," Matt added when I didn't respond.

I finally spared another glance at the girl. She was shoving something into her back pocket and fumbling with the lid on the gas tank of her black car…

"_Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawd,"_ I echoed before I could stop. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Gotta be," Matt agreed. "Josh has a picture of one tacked up over the photo of his wife. I'd know that car anywhere."

"But you can't even get them over here," I argued. "If I can't find them in New York City, how's some high-schooler in Podunk, Washington going to have one?"

"Only one way to find out," Matt rejoined. "Um, Miss?"

The brunette turned and got the deer-in-headlights look as a direct result of having two middle-aged hikers ogling her car. Well, at least we weren't ogling anything _else. _I didn't know whether or not she'd feel better if I told her my Ella was about the same age as her, so I couldn't possibly be…well, you know.

I looked away, desperate for something else to stare at, and found that no matter the price tag on her wheels, this girl was a typical teenage driver. She had an overstuffed bookbag on the front seat even when school was out for the summer and on top was one of those phones that cost more than my mortgage payment and have more bells and whistles than my car.

_Rich dad_, I guessed immediately. _If she turns around, I'll probably see some unpronounceable label on her jeans._

I'd have checked to see if the label was visible, but it wasn't worth staring at a teenager's butt just to see if she was wearing Dolce de la Renta jeans or something. Instead, I responded to Matt's narrative when necessary and started cataloging the camping gear in my head.

I was halfway through the canned goods when Matt elbowed me. "Get the camera," he hissed.

"Why?" I asked stupidly, my mind still on franks and beans.

"I want a _picture_," he said. "Think what Josh'll say when he sees it! He'll flip!"

The person who would flip was Nancy. She'd let him use his tax return on this trip because it was easier than watching him go through a mid-life crisis. She'd let him get that Nikon because he insisted that he couldn't hike the Olympics without a top-notch digital camera. He'd promised to take plenty of pictures of forests and towering peaks. And here we were, breaking in the new toy a few thousand miles away from those promises , all for a Mercedes _Guardian. _Even the teenager was looking disturbed by that.

We'd just have to stop at the Port Angeles Wal-Mart and get the picture printed before either Nancy or Jenna saw it.

"Have you seen the video of this thing?" Matt babbled on as I unearthed the Nikon and powered it up. "The guy in the video went after it with everything from a baseball bat to a machine gun…"

I wasn't really interested in how it held up against a flamethrower. Now Matt was making an idiot of himself, leaning on it like he was showing it off on The Price is Right and stroking it with more affection than I'd seen him show his kids in months.

He left off with a list of the sorts of people who bought this kind of car just as I snapped the picture. Drug lords, mob bosses and the like. Just the kind of people who had their headquarters in Forks, Washington.

"Do you think _she'_s anything?"

I didn't want to look at the girl again. She'd taken cover in the sedan and I could see her sitting rigid in the driver's seat. Maybe she _was_ something unusual. Daughter of the Godfather. Witness protection program participant. Secret Service agent off-duty.

"I think she's someone with a really over-protective loved one," I guessed. "He doesn't want anything—not a piece of gravel and not an ICBM—to mess with her."

Matt waved me forward and I only half-grudgingly took a picture next to the kind of car that a modern James Bond might have driven to his high school prom. Then, knocking lightly on the hood of the car, I leaned over and grinned reassuringly at the petrified girl we'd been terrorizing.

"Thanks, miss," I called. "Enjoy the drive."

She flashed me a slightly nauseated gri n and peeled out of the parking lot the moment that we'd moved our middle-aged butts off of her car. Not that I could blame her, of course.

"Geez," Matt said in parting. "Wish someone loved me _that_ much."

"Nancy does," I informed him. "She just loves you enough to know that you'd live in fear of getting a scratch on it."

I was speaking from personal experience, of course. I'd driven the Explorer like I was touching a sacred relic until we got the thing paid off.

"So," I said before he could mope any more. "We'll be getting to camp around dinner. What do you want, Lipton noodles or hot dogs?"

And just like that, we were back to normal.


End file.
